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Author's Chapter Notes:
Thank you Mari and Marilyn for the betaing. You're too good to me, and I love you both!

Thank you for reading and letting me know what you think. It means the world, and you're awesome for doing so!

I hope you like the chapter!
Day Four – Let people know how you feel (Part B)



Telling Xander was a whole different story.

Somehow, having seen him at Spike’s, I’d expected him to own up to his part in my unfortunate resurrection and accept my need to be alone. I was even tempted to tell him the truth about where I was. I reconsidered in the end; Xander sucks at keeping secrets, and I didn’t want to add any pressure to him, especially the pressure that would result from his having to withhold something from his best friend.

Of course, I was planning on calling him later in the day. I needed to wait until the guilt that had settled in once the initial wave of elation over telling Willow what I felt had worn off.

Spike insisted I do it before the grease of the bacon had even cleared my mouth. “You have to strike while the iron is hot. If he hears about it from Red, it’ll be harder for him.”

Was it possible he was concerned for Xander’s feelings?

He must have read my question in my eyes, because he graced me with the most scornful of scornful looks ever to have been seen on a hot, blond vampire’s face. “The harder this is for him, the harder it’ll be for you in the long-run,” he said. “Take your time if you want, see if I care when he doesn’t talk to you ever again, and you go from wronged party to Wicked Witch of the West.” He frowned. “No, wait. That’s Red. You’d be Zombie Buffy with a Grudge.”

I shoved the tray he’d brought my breakfast on against his stomach and dialed Xander’s cell number. That was all the acknowledgment the blond menace was going to get from me.

“Buffster,” Xander said, with what I could tell was false cheer. “To what do I owe this pleasure? Decided none of the hot bods on the beach can hold a candle to mine?”

I was at a momentary loss before I remembered I was supposed to be vacationing by the sea. So Willow hadn’t told him yet. I gave a noncommittal answer. “Actually, the fresh air has cleared my head a lot, and I’ve been doing some thinking… I haven’t been entirely honest with you, Xan. About how I’ve been—since you brought me back.”

His voice turned completely serious. “Where are you? I can come over right now, if you want to talk. I was waiting for you to bring it up; you’ve been acting weir—”

“There’s a reason for that.” My voice was low, like when I’d told my mom there were monsters in the world. He wouldn’t like what I was about to say any more than she had. “You know that.”

“I know. I’m just happy you’re over it now. Talking about it means you’re doing better.”

“Over it? Doing better? I didn’t break my arm, Xander, I was taken out of Heaven!” It wasn’t the best way for me to react, not by raising my tone, but I was suddenly all defensive. “I don’t know why you’d think someone who’d dedicated years to fighting evil would end up in hell, but the thing is, I didn’t. I went upstairs, to the great beyond, and everything was perfect and peaceful and quiet, until you all decided to fuck it up for me. You wouldn’t let me just be done! And now you want me to be happy, and all I can think of is what you took away from me. I said it was okay, but it’s not.”

All the resentment I should have aimed at Willow—who should have known better, because she was the brains after all—spewed out and showered Xander, who amazingly didn’t sit back and take it.

“We fucked it up for you? ” If I’d been a little loud, he was shouting. “You were our friend, and we tried to keep you with us. You went and jumped, when all it would have taken for the prophecy to be fulfilled was for the blood to stop flowing. Do you know of another way to do that? I do. A couple: like putting stupid band-aids on the wounds, or having your friendly neighborhood vampire lick the cuts closed. You didn’t even think of those solutions, did you? You just decided to die and be a hero and leave us behind. Well, we decided to be heroes too, by saving you.”

My jaw hurt, and touching it, I realized I’d clenched it so hard I had to put conscious effort into relaxing the muscle. One look at Spike, who hadn’t gone the gallant way and left the room this time, revealed he was paler than usual, slack-jawed, and his eyes were wide with something akin to shock. Neither of us, none of us, had thought of those alternatives. I had just decided to give my life for the world—Chosen-One-style. I scowled until Spike turned away and pretended to be busy staring at the wall.

“You didn’t save me,” I hissed into the receiver. “I didn’t need saving. I was perfectly happy, and now I’m miserable.” Okay, so I’d never been perfectly happy and I was no longer all that miserable, but that wasn’t the point.

Xander wasn’t done. “Boo hoo, you had to come back to this imperfect, un-peaceful, noisy place, for a while longer. At least you know where you’ll be going in the end. Or where the person you used to be was going. Don’t know where this ungrateful thing you’ve become is heading.”

“Ungrateful, because you made a choice for me, without asking me? Another one? You needed the saving, you couldn’t do the job, and you didn’t care to check what that would cost me.”

A choked sound reached my ears, and I realized that, for all his anger, Xander was sobbing. “Ungrateful because you don’t see what it costs us to be your friends. We’ve always been too little for you, Buffy, but this one time we tried to be what you deserved. Maybe we did it for us, too, but we thought we were giving you a chance to have what you wanted. If you’d bothered telling us you wanted to be done, we’d have tried to manage without you. If you’d tried to be our friend and not our general, you’d have shown us you were hurting before it came to this.” He paused long enough to catch his breath. “But you lied. And you kept lying. I don’t know if we can come back from this.”

I didn’t know how I’d gone from plaintiff to defendant. “Maybe we can’t.”

In my mind’s eye, I could see him nod, shaggy hair bobbing. It was ironic that his mental image made me smile, made me feel some affection for him after so long, when things were at their worst between us. “I have to go,” he said finally. “Take care.”

The line went dead on me, and I realized what people meant by saying the silence was deafening. The lack of sound felt palpable, like something had stuffed my ears, painfully blocking everything out.

Spike stalked to my side in his usual graceful manner, his feet stirring no echo without the heavy boots. “Didn’t see that coming,” he muttered in lieu of an apology, and I sighed in relief that the silence could be broken.

I hadn’t either, so I couldn’t blame him. “It’s okay.” I felt drained and told him so. He suggested daytime television, which I guess acted as one of his cure-it-alls. “I’ll pass.” All I wanted to do was wallow in self-pity for a while. Telling my friends I hated what they’d done was supposed to act as absolution to me; they were the ones supposed to be guilt-ridden at the end of the day. Xander’s rant had wormed its way to the part of me that felt useless and wrong and made all the doubt resurface.

Spike, with his uncanny ability to see right through me and throw my innermost feelings in my face so I would have to deal with them no matter how I loved my denial, shook his head. “He’s hurting, pet. First he’d been thinking he was your hero, then he’d convinced himself you’d forgiven him and the witch for what they’d done, and now he found out you resent him. He’s always put you on a pedestal. Realizing he failed you so miserably made him lash out.”

“You think he’ll come around?” I chewed on the inside of my cheek—a habit I knew Spike despised, but I honestly wasn’t doing it to irk him.

“He will. If there’s hope for you, there’s hope for him. And stop that!” He tapped my cheek with his forefinger. “Do you care if he comes around?”

I thought about that. I generally didn’t like people disapproving of me. Was that why I cared what Xander thought? “I’m not sure. I think I do.”

My little drama-queen threw his arms in the air. “All hail honesty at first try!” He was beaming. “By the time you figure that out, he’ll be as pussy-whipped as he usually is when he’s around you.”

I grinned despite myself. My fingers sought out Spike’s waistband, found it, and tugged him closer. “He was right about many things, you know.”

He allowed himself to fall on the bed, not breaking eye-contact. “He was.”

“But I’m not ungrateful.”

I don’t know if he saw the glint in my eyes or felt the miniscule movement of my fingers towards his fly—I was trying to be discrete—but he arched an eyebrow and gave me a disappointed look. “Are we going to have to go over this again?”

“You said that if I’m in a life-threatening situation and can only be saved by sucking you off…” Why couldn’t he respond humorously and let me strip him? I needed something to take the edge off. “I’m life-threateningly depressed.” It didn’t have to be about me, and I didn’t want to hurt him. I wanted to make it all about him. I was going to be grateful to him, show him I realized he cared, and that his caring was welcome. That was all I could allow myself to give him for the time being, but it was more than I’d offered him so far.

I’m really lame at expressing feelings. Always have been.

He snorted. “You’re not life-threateningly anything, except possibly spoiled.” Stilling my hand with his, he let his head fall back. “I wasn’t going to suggest this until tomorrow, but maybe you need it now.”

I knew he was building anticipation on purpose and didn’t let him see I was itching to hear what he had in mind.

“We could spar.”

Humph. Not my first choice of a physical exertion method.

***

Sparring turned out to be a great idea. Spike had made me promise I wouldn’t make a run for it or go for the family jewels, and unchained me. Then we’d exchanged punches and kicks until every muscle in my body was tense and aching.

Then he’d drawn me another bath.

By the time I went to bed, I was more in touch with my body than I’d been since I’d jumped from that tower.

And I still wanted to be in touch with Spike’s body.

Having showered, he came out of the bathroom, jeans already on. His chest was gleaming with water and his hair, still wet, was plastered to his head. I wondered if he’d bothered to towel dry the part of his body that was covered by the denim, and how he’d pulled his jeans up his thighs if he hadn’t. He started rummaging through his trunk for a t-shirt, offering me a view of the rippling muscles in his back and arms.

“Don’t.” I couldn’t say more than that; my voice was caught in my throat.

He looked at me over his shoulder.

I gave speaking another try. “Don’t put a t-shirt on.” It wasn’t a demand, more a suggestion that I have to admit sounded like a plea. I didn’t care—not as long as he didn’t cover up his torso.

“I’m wet,” he said.

So was I, but wisely chose not to divulge that little bit of info.

He faced away again, stayed slumped for two long seconds, then straightened and turned toward me. He walked to the bed, his swagger faltering when I flipped back the covers on his side of the bed. I rolled so my back was to him. “I’ll be good,” I promised and meant it, despite my topless state already belying my words. “I just want to feel you.”

The mattress dipped behind me, and then his arms came up around me. He was careful not to touch anything he shouldn’t according to the rules he’d imposed on us. His chest covering my back made my skin break into goose-bumps. I didn’t think it was because of the difference in temperature.

“Tell me a story?” I asked. My body fought to melt back against his, yet I forced it to remain rigid, afraid he’d see that as betrayal of his trust and maybe leave the bed.

He told me a story I’d never heard before, that of the Mermaid of Zennor, Morveren, who was drawn to land by a human’s singing.

Morveren had dressed in everything the sea had to offer, so she could hide her fish-tail, and had managed to find her human, Mathew, by walking on said tail. When Mathew laid eyes on her, he fell instantly in love and tried to keep her from leaving.

“I cannot stay. I am a sea creature and must go back where I belong,” Spike said in a higher-pitched tone than his normal voice. I was, naturally, wondering when he’d get to the part where Morveren would get a pair of legs to stay with her man.

“But it didn't matter to him,” Spike continued. He used a huskier voice for Mathew, heavier than his own. “Then I will go with ye. For with ye, is where I belong.”

To my astonishment, Mathew carried the mermaid to the sea and sank in the water with her, never to be seen again. Legend has it, however, that he’s still singing to her and to the other mermaids—or that’s what Spike said.

“Those two weren’t concerned with the mechanics of fitting in each other’s world,” the vampire holding me pointed out, in case I’d missed the moral of the story. “They jumped right in.”

I’d done enough jumping for a couple of lifetimes and wasn’t up for any more of it.

Falling, however, was beyond my control.

“Goodnight, Spike,” I whispered, caressing the back of his palm. “Sleep tight.”

I knew I would.

And I forbade myself to have another freak-o-sode in the morning.


Chapter End Notes:
Any thoughts you want to share?

I'd like to share something of my own, if that's okay :) Despite what readers on my LJ thought, this chapter doesn't have Xander-bashing in my opinion. He's proven in canon that he can lash out when he feels threatened, and that's what I thought he did here. Plus, for the most part he was right!

And please don't hate me, but there will be no update next week. I'll be in Bucharest, visiting the inlaws for Christmas, so I want to wish you now a Happy Whatever You're Celebrating. May this holiday bring you joy!

*huggles*
Sotia



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